Google’s Android OS has finally crossed Nokia’s Symbian OS as the most shipped and most famous OS in the world. With this many more opportunities begin for upcoming Android centric phones as well as app developers in this field. For a country like India where the app industry is still in the nascent stage, there has been a keen interest in this field over the last couple of years. Various organizations have started developing apps, some for Blackberry, some for i-Phone and some others for the Symbian platform.
Despite the fact that Android is the number 1 in the world right now, Symbian is still leading in the country because of Nokia’s trust still making it sit at around 28% market share. But by 2014, Android OS is expected to cross Symbian in India too. And taking this into consideration, Webonise Labs has announced its plans to open an India–centric only Android app store.
This app store promises to develop apps which are completely India centric from Bollywood Masala apps to religious apps to even cricket apps. Everything about the app store will signify a sense of Indian-ness. You can say that this is an attempt to Indianise whatever is being offered in the world currently.
But what’s the big deal? Are they the first ones in this space? Isn’t this space fraught with competition considering the presence of Aircel, Airtel, Amazon and many more? How will third party apps protect themselves from viruses and different kinds of malware? All these questions are swirling in your mind, aren’t they?
There are two ways to look at this industry. The biggest entry barrier is that one has to have the technological savvy mind and competency to develop such kind of apps. And the second and more important thing is that one needs to always make sure that developing apps and sharing and downloading thing always involves the community. Without a proper community interaction and development, this can completely fail.
The biggies like Aircel, Airtel etc. compete in the horizontal space across various platforms. But Webonise aims to establish its core competency in the vertical space in Android itself. It is aiming for various ways of distribution. The most prominent are the Indian App Developer contest which can help ensure the right quality for apps and community sharing and also pre installing their apps in various new handsets. For pre-installations they already seem to be in talks with a couple of handset brands. With the app developers contest, they can also eradicate the problem of malwares affecting their apps like other third party developers.
Since people are not always too ready to pay for such apps having a proper revenue source for App Bazar may be difficult. It would be interesting to see how Webonise tackles that issue.
Till then, let’s keep our fingers crossed for probably the first India centric Android App Bazar!
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There are lot of companies trying their hand in android market in India. This is not the first one i dont know what the fuss is about? Mean while my fav. app on android india is “BANO CROREPATI”. Android and app lovers should try this it is free.
Hey, I am an android developer, please let me know what kind of apps u are looking for Indian perspective.
Hi,
You can contact me i am looking for developers to develop apps for me. We have contests also we pay up to $1000 for great apps plus revnue sharing model.
Check out what will make app stores successful in india here http://bit.ly/p4Nx7g
I like the idea of a India centric market but I the apps should be screened properly to prevent malware like we have seen popup in the Android Market yesterday.
This doesn’t look like an alternative to the current app market.. But I find it interesting.. Looks like they are trying to model the current Indian Retail structure.. There are malls and big showrooms everywhere.. but when it comes to Indians shopping they love to go to the traditional markets or the bazars.. I am not sure if this will work in the mobile VAS space, but it is a really interesting attempt.. daring considering the threshold for developing and supporting something like this.. And with Nokia putting its hands up, after taking off paid app support in India from the Ovi, maybe 3rd party app stores are the way ahead..
This is great!! Frankly Android market is overcrowded, and android is future! Local appstores with local contents is an inevitable eventuality. Good to see this happening India , so soon.
Though even i have few concerns about India specific apps but we can simply look back in history and look at success stories of many india specific products. Indian market is different and as everyone is expecting entry of android in rural market of india , then this app store will be more than needed. We will need simple app store and india specific applications which ar easy in use. Today i cant find them together at one place which we could find at mobinise. What I think , they have to do is keep the momentum , try to get as much as GOOD apps in their store, market it properly and keep google out of it :P
It is not as easy as it may sound but they are the first one and they will get a sure shot advantage of it.
I have mixed views regarding this.
Though its great that Indian customer base would now have a platform to look out for apps most relevant to them. But, is the Indian customer base large and tech savvy enough to make this model relevant.
I dont find it convincing enough that , why so fuss about ‘Indian-ness’ ? What is the problem in Android Market(with reference to Indian-ness and in general) that AppBazaar aims to solve?
I dont see any need for one more Android app store. Give Google sometime, they will make it Indians-friendly, I bet they are listening.